Auchenstroan Coloured Ryelands

Our sheep love nothing better than the springtime when they come off hay and move onto fresh, juicy grass.  Perhaps it’s the excitement of being back on grass after months of hay, or perhaps its their digestive systems re-adjusting or both, but all that fresh forage means some of our teddy bears get messy bottoms […]

Last April we noticed some of our elderly sheep (the 12 year olds) had come out of winter looking a bit slimmer than we liked.  So after a bit of research we came up with a plan – daily buckets containing a mixture of soaked alfalfa-beet and meadow grass pellets. This is our first experience […]

Running a smallholding seems to involve a lot of muck shovelling.  Especially during the winter when the little darlings spend much of their time mooching around the shed, the paddock and the hay feeders. With the increase in hoof-fall, these areas soon become very mucky.  So, every afternoon I pull on my gloves, my wellies […]

It’s a while since I put paw to paper, you can read my last story here: A few days ago something brilliant happened, the outside world turned white and the ground turned crunchy.  Us dogs, we have two worlds; the outside world where we go on patrol and run about.  And the inside world where […]

Now we’re a month into winter we’ve moved the little darlings onto hay again.  Although there’s still grass on the hills and the flock trundle round grazing, the grass lacks nutritional content and isn’t sweet and tasty like it is in the summer. For the last few winters we’ve been really lucky getting in small […]

This week I thought I’d better do something about our veggie patch.  Although still productive, it’s been looking a bit rough lately with weeds finally having won the battle despite my best efforts at keeping them at bay. Truth be told I actually did very minimal weeding over the summer.  The wool I’d laid down […]

Our sheep tend to spend much of the winter close to the hay feeders. While the fields remain open, the comfort of the shed and close proximity of food is too much of a draw. Main deliveries of hay are stored in a large shed, but we keep a few bales near the feeders to […]

Every week, (weather depending) I arm myself with my ‘sheep bits and bobs kit’ and set off for a morning of hoof and bottom trimming.   In other words, I gather in a small number of sheep and spend a lovely morning with our teddy bears doing their health checks.  This includes checking and trimming their […]

Shearing is a big day in the sheep calendar and it can be pretty stressful for everyone involved, the sheep, the shearers and the farmers.  We start thinking about shearing at the beginning of May when the weather warms up and the sheep start feeling hot and itchy in their woolly coats. Every spring I […]

Round about the beginning of May I started my annual “sheep shed muck-out”.   I needed to get it spick and span for shearing in June.  The sheep love their shed and spend a lot of time in it during the winter so it can get pretty mucky.  They would spend a lot of time in […]

It’s been about six weeks since my last blog entry about the wonders of alfalfa and sugar-beet for elderly sheep. This winter just gone, we’ve been keeping a special eye on three of our more elderly flock members; Sparkle and Scarlett and Shelby.  Sparkle and Scarlett are missing some front teeth, and Shelby has arthritis […]

A few years ago we made the decision to stop lambing.  Much as we loved having lambs skipping about each spring and doing zoomies around the paddock, we came to the realisation that it just wasn’t financially viable for us.  We do miss it from time to time though, lambing with all its highs and […]